


Vivere

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: (ft. cabal), Destiny 2, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 22:00:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11632791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: The Tower falls. Eris survives.After so long, she is not sure how to do anything else.





	Vivere

Eris Morn watches the Cabal ships break orbit and thinks of Mare Imbrium. 

She is far from the City, by now, her search taking her deep into the Eastern Flood Zone, the Seeders that nest there, the crystals poking through shallow pools. The Legion’s Fleet is great, however, and even here the great red ships are buzzing, searching for Guardians, outposts, whatever Light they can demolish from a distance. 

There is no Light here, though, and there has not been for a long time. The Hive are here, a thing of the Dark, and she is here, a thing of the Hive. She has no Light, no Ghost buzzing at her shoulder, nothing to trigger the Cabal’s sensors. Still, she knows that they will land eventually, set their hulking ships down and complete their search themselves. The brutes are slow, but they are methodical. There is a reason they have not been conquered. 

The tale of the three queens sings itself through her head, and she bites back a laugh. In the pit she had no one else for company, and so she turned to the stories in that battered journal, reading in the dim light of the lamps lining the halls. 

_A gentle place ringed in spears._ The spears have all been snapped, now, and the army has arrived in all its vicious splendor. One Queen has arrived, and another lurks on the horizon, wrapped in shadows, watching. 

The passage of ships above her slows, although the dark clouds still loom, rain dripping through the holes in the ceiling. She moves, leaving the dilapidated building behind and making her way towards the Seeder. There are few Hive here, now, although their tombships pass through in the distance, green eyes watching their quarry. The Cabal will not find her here; she did not live among the Hive without learning to hide in their shadow. 

Cold water seeps through her boots as she walks and Eris thinks of the Moon, again, Hive and death and dying, fear and hiding and _surviving,_ somehow. She was not brave then, and some part of her says she is not brave now, running when she knew what was upon them all. The City’s protectors will face death like her fireteam did, Lightless and to an enemy far more powerful than themselves. To go back and fight, to feel redemption like a sword to the gut- 

No. She will stay here for now, and maybe sneak away to Luna when the airspace clears. The Cabal are not an enemy she can fight; she is mortal, now, fragile in a way that the Guardians still at the Tower are just becoming reacquainted with, in a way that reminds her of standing in Crota’s great throne room and staring up into a jade-green Oversoul. 

The sky above her is dark and red with fire and she glances at it to break her reverie. Warm droplets soak through her veil, mixing with the dark tears on her cheeks. The Cabal will arrive soon, and it would be unwise to meet them. 

Her search is quick, efficient in the way of a Hunter and refined through hundreds of missions for the Hidden. There is little here, and nothing she hasn’t seen before, just crystals and runes and a few long-dead worms, shriveled and bone-white. She steps on one, grounds it to dust with the heel of her boot. 

She was expecting little, coming here; these training grounds have been stomped over for years, and any valuables would have long been taken by the remaining Hive or some desperate scavenger. Still, any failure feels catastrophic, now, with the Cabal looming and ready to punish any mistake she makes. What would have been a put-off search of an abandoned nest turns to a waste of time, misspent energy, unnecessary danger. 

Eris stands, brushing dirt and bone dust off her knees. There is nothing, and she should be leaving, returning to her hidden ship to watch the skies and sleep. Soon the Cabal will be marching their slow march southward towards this dead place. 

Before she goes, she wrenches off the great spikes of bone jutting from her armored shoulders, lets them fall to the ground with a heavy thud. They are unneeded here, and she has a long history of leaving what is unnecessary behind. As she leaves, Eris thinks of the Knight she took them from: Spawn of Crota, orange chiton stained brown from slinking through the dark. It’d taken her a month to find a suitable Knight to kill, and another week to work up the nerve. 

(Her first victory, down in the tunnels of the Moon: driving a knife through the creature’s neck, quick and silent and deadly.) 

She sloshes back through the cold water, worms her way through the jagged hole in the chain-link fence. Some part of her is glad of the burning sky above her, the rusting buildings, the half-dead grass. This place is dead but it is not Crota’s temple, not the tunnels beneath Luna. She is alone again but she is not trapped. She is alone again but she can see the sun. She is alone again but those around her are not dead, not all of them, not yet. 

The Cabal come, eventually, long after she finds a hiding spot among the trees. The Legion does not expect to find anything here, and it shows: the scouting party is two Legionaries, a single Phalanx leading them. Eris feels for the knife hidden in her boot, even if she knows to engage would be deadly. 

So, she waits, and the party lumbers around until they are satisfied and then lumber back the way they came. She lies still and silent until she sees the scout ship return to the fleet, and does not move for another half-hour after that.

The walk back to her ship is silent, save the stirring of leaves where she walks over them. The birds have abandoned their singing, driven out by the night and the storm and the Cabal’s warpath. She thinks she sees a deer, once, but it vanishes when she turns to look. 

She walks, and after another hour ducks into a small valley. Her ship is waiting for her where she left it, thankfully, unseen and unravaged, still new enough to be unfamiliar. Eris studies it and thinks of the campaign against Oryx, of the loss of her ship, her second home. She wonders where Holliday is, now, if she escaped from the Tower, if her family did. She thinks of the times Amanda would come by in those very first days when Crota still reigned, ask about her ship, if she was hungry, if she wanted to talk or just listen to someone else’s voice. 

Readjusting to the Light was a long and painful process, and she wonders if she did it only for peace to be ripped from her hands again. She sighs, watches the sky for a moment, then climbs back into her ship. She cannot leave here, not yet, not with the Cabal warships so close. 

So she eats, checks the comm channels, sheds her cloak and the thick armor she knows will not stop a slug round. The channels are nothing but static, still, and her meal is dry and tasteless. 

It is past midnight before she stops checking, before she can force herself to eat, before she can ignore the drumming of the rain on the ship’s roof and sleep. 

(In between the dreams of nothing, the nightmares of the Hive:

A sunny afternoon at the Tower. Clouds drift around the Traveler, soft and white. 

“Sandwich, if you want it,” Holliday says, sitting on the railing. Her red scarf is bright, even in the shade. “Conversation, too.” 

Eris does. Holliday talks.)

**Author's Note:**

> me, in the middle of writing about the aftermath of the tower falling: hey eris+amanda would be cute wouldn't it
> 
> as always, thank you for reading! :)
> 
> (p.s. i finally set up a sideblog at allteacher.tumblr.com ! i mention it mainly so y'all know it's me reblogging stuff. :P )


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